8.10.09

More Good PR

This is a quote from an interview I read on the Independent newspaper's website yesterday. It's with the 84-year-old writer and activist Gore Vidal who is a tad angry over the state of the USA these days.

Is there any hope? "Every sign I see is doom. But then people say" – he adopts a whiny, nasal voice – "'Oh Mr Vidal, you're so negative, can't you say something nice about America? It's a wonderful country, everybody wants to live here.' Oh yes? When was the last time you saw a Norwegian with a green card who wanted to come here because of the health service? I'll pay you if you can find one."

You can read the rest of the article here if you're not too busy hunting for a Norwegian dying to get into America.

WWR - They used to emigrate like the Irish did to the US but these days I think if Norwegians go abroad they almost always come back, often dragging foreign spouses with them. Isn't that right Caroline ;)

Or, like me, they applied a decade ago due to a crazy wish to stay (this is before I discovered the benefits of being in the noggie system!), and now that they've finally opened the thing (no joke), they're trying to figure out how to respond diplomatically to the "why do you want to live in the US" question at the interview...

Norwegians used to emigrate in huge numbers back in ca. 1850-1950. Before the welfare state kicked in, and before the oil, of course. At present, there are more Norwegian-Americans in the world, around 5 mill., than there are people in Norway (ca. 4.7 mill.). The emigration to the US only started to slow after the first world war, with American restrictions on immigrants. But few Norwegians emigrate these days, then mostly as "love-refugees". And many of them do come back. :)